Casting and cooking this weekend. Made me think

General advice when you fry fish is get the oil hot, drop a tiny piece of the batter center of the pan, if it sizzles, start cooking. Only thing is the oil gets hot center of the pan first, sides of a heavy cast iron pan much cooler. Drop in couple pounds of cold fillets they drop the temperature considerably and you end up with greasy fish.   

Experienced cook brings the heat up slower lets every thing get good and hot, so there is some reserve heat in the mass of the frying pan to counter the cold fish, and drops the fillets in one at a time slowly. Golden brown not greasy at all.

Casting exactly the same way. Lead thermometer may say 700 or 800 degrees but is everything else hot ?  My gas furnace weighs probably 40 pounds 20 lbs of lead few fire bricks in front of the open face 75 pounds of mass that needs to be hot before it's going to throw nice bullets. Not to mention the mold needs to be hot same time.

Go slow bring all up to nice and hot you get bullets with a very small reject rate. Even with 90 degree ambient temperature this weekend I let the pot sit 30 minutes or more with the mold on the furnace's shelf before starting to cast.  6 rejects slow to cut the sprue and throw, bring the mold up nice and hot then all good ones. 

Boats

When the pot is up to temp and the mould has been sitting on the shelf pre-heating, dip and hold the bottom front corner of the mould into the lead for 20 seconds and you won't have the need to cast and dispose of bullets to bring the mould up to the correct casting temp. as was recommended with the purchase of a B&D Mould on the included instruction sheet. It works exceptionally well with all moulds.